Multiculturalism, Part 2

15 Jan 1997 Myrna Marler

Hello Everyone,

I've been on the list for a year and a half, but basically in lurk mode because I'm still learning and not confident enough to join in your discussions. But I've learned a lot. Now I'm about to embark on a dissertation which will deal with young adult literature for African-Americans and I need help. For contrast, I need titles of books that are written by white authors about African-American teenagers and your assessment of how well they do that, or if they can do that well, or if they should. Thanks for any help you can give me.

One book with a white author and black protagonist is _Sounder_. . . I don't know the author's name off hand (however). This book one a Newbery award.

Why _shouldn't_ a writer invent characters with different skin hues? We all (fiction writers) invent characters who are different than us. . . even when we write about characters based on ourselves. I don't have any time for this polemic now, but I have no patience or sympathy for people who impose rules and regulations on the creative process, whether they are right-wing christians or crazed anti-racists. It is perfectly valid to criticize independent works, but blanket assumptions about what artist should and shouldn't do are made of the same cloth (note the consistency in my metaphors) as the racism we are struggling against.

Dear Myrna:

I wrote a comprehensive exam answer on this topic. It's at home, but I can give you details later, if you want. I think I wrote on William Armstrong's _Sounder_, Mildred Taylor's _Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry_, and one other book which I can't now remember (those comps are *so* useful to you later on--ha, ha!). I believe I wound up concluding that the African-American authors were better able to capture the emotional tension of African-American life than were white authors. Although most people rave about _Sounder_, I felt that I never really could get inside the heads of the characters the way I could with Taylor's book.

Of course that could have more to do with writing ability than with race, but I don't think so. I feel the same way about adult authors. Oddly, though, I think that black authors can capture the white experience better than white authors can capture the black experience (an example: Zora Neale Hurston's _Seraphs on the Suwanee_).

I think we have discussed this topic before on this list; you might want to check Roxanne's web page (and maybe she could repeat the address for us).

Good luck.

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:25:12 +0000 Kurtis Scaletta writes: " One book with a white author and black protagonist is _Sounder_. . . I don't know the author's name off hand (however). This book one a Newbery award. "

They are very primary books, but Ezra Jack Keats' Whistle for Willie, Peter's Chair, A Snowy Day and others were written by a man(white) about children (black) in his neighborhood.

"Why _shouldn't_ a writer invent characters with different skin hues?"

Agreed. Any person should be able to write about neighbors whatever their skin color.

I recommend cynthia Voigt's Come a Stranger. Excellent character portrayal of a girl who receives a scholarship to dance school and her first realization of her role as a token black. Voigt's ability to develop real people in her novels is beyond color borders.

Katie writes:

"Oddly, though, I think that black authors can capture the white experience better than white authors can capture the black experience (an example: Zora Neale Hurston's _Seraphs on the Suwanee_)."

This is to be expected, the same as women can write about men better than men about women. We live in a white, male culture, and whiteness and maleness are familiar to us all.

But, I don't think any writer should hesitate to write about whatever s/he wants to; that writing about minorities is -harder- doesn't mean it can't be done.

With respect to the question of White representation of African Americans, what about "The Moves Make the Man"? Bruce Brooks (White) writes about an African-American boy, who, among other things, integrates an all-White school. (Newbery Honor book when it came out.) I was a bookseller for many years, and the bookstore once hosted an autographing for Brooks. An African-American boy and his father came in, looked around, saw Brooks at the autographing table, and kept looking around for the author, clearly not for a moment thinking a White guy wrote the book. That image has always stayed with me, and I think of it whenever the question arises whether people can write convincingly about another culture.

Katie - what are you actually saying?? African American authors capture the white experience better than whites capturing the African American experience??? I would love to hear some more examples.

I do believe that as writers we all try to capture the essence of our characters -- whatever their race. Jane Yolen captured this wonderfully in "An Empress of Thieves" -HORNBOOK 11/94 issue!

Something else to think of - Whoopi Goldberg once made a very good point about the terms we use to describe ourselves - African American, Italian American, Irish American etc. Aren't we all just Americans? Isn't true that our relatives that arrived here from wherever were actually the only - Wherever Americans and we are just plain Americans??

Should we as writers only write about our own experience? I think that would be terribly boring!

Are there really any "crazed" anti-racists? "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

It occurs to me that many of us have the nerve to write from the point of view of a child, or even an adolescent--which is practically a different species. You can argue that we have once been that species and may have enough memories of that period to write convincingly. You could also argue that all writers are human and therefore may be able to write convincingly about human characters, whatever their hue.

Christopher Yucho wrote: "Are there really any "crazed" anti-racists? "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.""

There are crazed "anti-racists." I should have put it in quotation marks. There are people who amaze me with their dedication to making the world a better place, and there are smug academics who sit in their comfy tenure chairs and make riskless criticisms of the nature: "here I am pointing out something that is very very bad, therefore I must be very very good."

It is too bad that people who read my hastily written diatribe don't know me. I am as "outraged" and "paying attention" as they come. In my college years was constantly in battle against the entrenched Reagan-era mentality that dominated my Alma Mater. I am an earnest advocate of social justice, but I think such protest belongs in a political arena, not in literary criticism. It is _usually_ (not always) shallow, and in any case, doesn't have much to do with the way serious writers work, or with the way people read.

I am particularly bitter after a long struggle with a senior thesis advisor over a novella I wrote with a Native American hero. Having no "experience" as a Native American, she said, I shouldn't write about one. This was completely at odds with my personal creative process--the character existed a certain way in my mind and I needed to write about him. Or how about this: I have a strong desire to write a novel about a child soldier in Liberia (pending research I don't have the time to do). Would an African American be more qualified to write this book than I, who spent a signicant chunk of my childhood _in_ Liberia?

Just think: if writers should avoid writing about children with different cultural histories, because they don't share the "experience," then writers shouldn't write historical fiction--I could protest _The Midwife's Apprentice_ because the author obviously can't understand the Medieval experience. You've got to believe that I have far more in common with a 20th Century African-American than I do with a White from over 500 years ago.

For that matter, where does H.A. Rey get off writing those Curious George books? He doesn't have the Monkey experience.

I was scanning Kay Vandergrift's extraordinary web site(s) (http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/special/kay/myers.html) and stumbled on this quote on her page for Walter Dean Myers:

From: Walter Dean Myers 1994 "Margaret A. Edwards Award Acceptance Speech"Journal of Youth Services in Libraries. Vol. 8, No. 2 (Winter 1995): 129-133.

"Should whites write about blacks?" "Of course I feel you should write about anybody you want to write about, I couldn't care less who you write about. But what very often happens is that, when you're writing about a culture that's not your own, you may hit large areas of it, but there are so many areas that you miss." From: Roger Sutton. "Threads in Our Cultural Fabric," School Library Journal. Vol. 40, No. 6 (June 1994): 26.

I think it's important to consider the difference between "speaking as" as an exercise in empathy-building or imagination and "speaking for" as a tool for persuasion or misrepresentation. How do we do that? Dunno. To assume that to write as anOther is always to "speak for" is true enough; but isn't the former as true? One is colonialization (as Perry Nodelman persuades), the other an act of the imagination. The boundaries have disturbing implications. Though I wouldn't want anyone to go for the easy way out and just "keep the pretenders out."

If we want to get past the notion that folks "writing about what they know" is limited to an assumed and essentialistic list of experiences and attributes connected to their skin color or gender, we need to allow for folks writing about "what they know" as people in general, as members of the human race. Sounds awfully humanistic, doesn't it. To some extent it is (no apologies), but it has implications from the other side of the rhetorical exchange regarding connecting to folks different from ourselves: If we want children (our ourselves) to read for vicarious experience and not simply read about "folks like themselves" (whatever that means, physically, culturally, spiritually, or intellectually), then it seems we shouldn't force writers into a similarly restricting box.

I've always been interested in this issue as it relates to fantasy and science fiction for the young. Have any of you ever had students assert simultaneously that 1) children love fantasy and it is the quintessential children's literature, but yet 2. children REALLY want to read about themselves, and so fantasy isn't nearly as useful or as good as realism? Genre seems like a really good site for discussing the tensions in such issues.

This discussion is starting to sound awfully defensive. To me, it seems intuitive that of course people generally are most able to write about subjects/issues with which they are very familiar.

The idea of writers writing about groups of which they are not part, to which they do not belong, is an interesting one. I don't think most of us would argue that it can't be done, though I would offer a quotation from Rudine Sims Bishop in an essay titled "Multicultural Literature for Children: Making Informed Choices," included in _Teaching Multicultural Literature in Grades K-8_, Violet Harris, ed., Christopher-Gordon, 1992:

"Teachers who seek to gain confidence in their ability to select culturally authentic children's literature need to become familiar with the literary traditions of the various cultural groups...My claim here is not that an author from one group cannot write worthwhile books about another group, but that the resulting literature is not likely to be claimed by members of the featured group as THEIR literature. Reading the literature of insiders will help teachers learn to recognize recurring themes, topics, values, attitudes, language features, social mores--those elements that characterize the body of literature the group claims as its own. (pp.46-47)"

I agree with many of you that many good books have been written by "outsiders," and I don't think Rudine Sims Bishop would disagree. Certainly, books written by men from a woman's point of view, and vice versa, could be listed here perhaps by the dozens. Yet, in the fiction I write (don't start searching the shelves, dear friends; I said WRITE, not SELL), I am aware of my own limitations. I usually use female protagonists because I feel myself on firmer ground there; I'm not very comfortable or adept at a male protagonist's perspective. I suspect that often other writers are not so good at perspectives other than their own, either, though they will try it, for whatever reason. I was jerked right out of my suspension of disbelief when I ran across a line in John Grisham's _The Chamber_ when, in describing a scene through the eyes of an African-American prison guard, he described the man as having "shuffled" back to the office. Am I the only person who sees that as an inadvertently racist verb, or am I making too much of that? I think it represents the dangers of less than careful editing when we presume to take on the role of membership in groups to which we do not belong. I'm not saying don't do it; I'm merely saying there are pitfalls of which we may be unaware.

From a talk/article I have been working on:

Librarians, teachers, and publishers have also become more and more aware of whole groups of children who had long been disenfranchised in books--African-American children and Native American children, girls, gays, etc. They are certainly striving to bring out books that reflect a greater diversity of cultures and families. It is no longer just Peter Rabbit.

This is certainly a good and important change. But at the same time, we are struggling now with a kind of Balkanization in children's books that seems to run hand-in-glove with this rise in cultural sensibility.

What I mean by this is that there are now loud demands that only a person from a culture may write about that culture and this is creating a literary apartheid. Think of it: if I, as a careful artist, am only allowed to write about the culture I grew up in--Jewish, Manhattan, Newport News, Virginia, and Westport, Ct. 1940s-1960--I could have written The Devil's Arithmetic but not Passager; I could have created All Those Secrets of the World but not Piggins; I could have made And Twelve Chinese Acrobats but not The Emperor and the Kite.

When a child at a bookstore where I was giving a reading asked me "You are Jewish, so how come you can write Hark: A Christmas Sampler," I answered: "I have written murder mysteries, too."

Authors are the eyes and ears of the past, the present, the future definite and indefinite. We create worlds that were, are, and might be. We are the real magic makers, and please rememeber that the word magic comes from, the word magus or mage, which means wise one. The gifts we bear are stories. Filled with images. Filled with imagination. Mage-magic-image-imagination: a mantra for teachers and librarians.

At 11:25 AM 1/17/97 -0500, Chris Saad wrote: "This discussion is starting to sound awfully defensive. To me, it seems intuitive that of course people generally are most able to write about subjects/issues with which they are very familiar. "

I agree, but the point is that your skin color or ethnic affiliation is not necessarily an accurate guide to the subjects you may be familiar with and should not be the starting point for literary criticism. I suppose it is part of the universal mania for putting people in categories...

In a message dated 97-01-17 15:24:49 EST, Jane Yolen writes: "Librarians, teachers, and publishers have also become more and more aware of whole groups of children who had long been disenfranchised in books--African-American children and Native American children, girls, gays, etc. They are certainly striving to bring out books that reflect a greater diversity of cultures and families. It is no longer just Peter Rabbit."

I'm not sure Peter Rabbit is quite the example you want here, Jane. Yes, it evokes an Anglophile, priviliged childhood -- but it is, after all, about a rabbit, not a little WASP boy. Maybe Christopher Robin?

One could do a humorous article on Peter as a juvenile delinquent from a single-parent family ... well, it's probably been done. The "cheerful and improvident" Flopsy bunnies are clearly in need of a little social work too.

(Of course I agree with Jane's serious points.)

It is 5pm on Friday; I have been at work all day (and all week) preparing for the new semester that begins on Tuesday; I am tired, my eyes are strained and I'm not looking forward to going out into the sub-zero, snowy evening. I sit down to read through the last of my email before going home, noting with a smile that we have hit upon an old/new topic that is pushing the buttons of some readers. Finally, I am able to click on the last message in my box. Here I am, reading words that are so powerful, so heartfelt, that I am tempted to run out into the halls of this College of Education and preach the importance of reading and the power of the written word. However, there is no one left in the building and I would just be talking to the walls. So instead, I will shout out to my friends on child lit, which is like preaching to the choir, but that's ok.

Thank you, Jane Yolen.

I agree wholeheartedly with what Jane Yolen says here. Keep in mind that authors have an almost God-like power with their characters. They create them, make them in the image they see fit, and put them in the story to do what they are supposed to do. The characters, no matter what race, are all a part of the author. If someone could only write about a people that they knew about, we wouldn't have many stories we now have such as Ende's _The Neverending Story_, the Star Wars Trilogy, ET, Star Trek, any sci-fi or fantasy, Mother Goose, or basically any stories. This authors tangent reminds me of a line from the movie, _Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory_: "We are the musicmakers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams."

For a look at some of the objections that have been raised to books written by white authors about African-Americans, you might want to read some of the essays in a book titled _Readings on Racism_ (Sorry--I can't find a complete citation). One article discusses problems with the Colliers' books about the Arabus family; another, by Rudine Sims, looks at _Words by Heart_ . She feels it "perpetuates negative images and stereotypes . . . join[ing] such books as _The Cay_, _Sounder_ and _The Slave Dancer_ in purportedly presenting a sympathetic picture of Blacks even as it misinforms readers and reincorces racist attitudes." Sims addresses several aspects of the book, including "the tendency to associate things black with things negative" and the passivity and willingness of some of the black characters to forgive outrages committed by white characters. (As another post noted, Sims has elsewhere made a distinction between culturally-conscious fiction and books that use a black characters as "everychild" (usually those by white authors) and noted that both types of books can be used in the classroom, so this article isn't so much an attack on the idea of white authors writing about people of color as it is an essay explaining why some such books are problematic.)

Kurtis,

After sleeping on it, I couldn't agree with you more!

On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Sam Olion wrote: "This authors tangent reminds me of a line from the movie, _Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory_: "We are the musicmakers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.""

I haven't seen the film or read the book, but the line is a quotation from a poem by Arthur O'Shaughnessy - the whole verse is

We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers , And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems.

This whole verse is indeed very reminiscent of what Jane Yolen said. It's a good reminder of how much we owe to authors for sharing their imagined worlds with us. There's no way we can all experience the whole range of experiences and emotions available, but by reading we can do so vicariously.

Waller Hastings 18 Jan 97

I've been staying out of the current spate of postings on the issue of who should write about whom, mainly because I basically agree with most of what I've read. But considering that this is at least the third time this issue has come up on this list in the past year and a half or so, and that the discussion always settles into the same kind of general agreement that "Yes of course one cannot limit writers as to subject, and isn't this balkanization of the literary world terrible, etc., etc. . . ." with the majority of the posts weighing in on this side, I am moved to ask:

Are we all perhaps protesting too much?

I mean, really, there haven't been very many people on the list in any of these discussions who have said that one shouldn't write about whatever subject and characters one wishes. (The issue of whether readers should accept as an authentic depiction of, say, eskimo life by a white author, is a somewhat different one from whether that white author should be "allowed" to write about the eskimo.) The last two times this discussion has begun, at least, it came from somebody posting the "friend of a friend" argument: "One of my friends (teachers, students, etc.) has questioned whether people should write about those who are of a different background than them. . ." In other words, even the person who is raising the question has usually not asserted that whites shouldn't write about blacks, etc.

The defensiveness for a position that nobody present is actually attacking suggests that the question itself strikes a nerve among the list readership (which I have to assume, barring convincing proof to the contrary, is overwhelmingly drawn from the majority white culture, at least as far as the U.S. portion is concerned). It might be more interesting to explain *why* we feel compelled to defend an eminently reasonable position so earnestly from (what seem to be) phantom challengers, rather than to continue this endless straw poll of our tolerance for authors extending their creative limits beyond their own circumstances.

No?

The citation for readings in racism is: Donna McCann & Gloria Woodward(Eds).(1970) The Black American in books for children: Readings in Racism. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press

Powerful essays!!!!! Speaks to the Afrocentric perspective of many folx nowadays.

This is in response to Wally Hastings posting. I, too, feel tolerance and respect for the storytellers whose imagined worlds enrich us all. However, I think we all need to realize that imagined worlds are not necessarily real worlds, and any representation of a group by an outsider is inherently flawed. I happen to belong to a group that is frequently represented in best-selling novels and no matter how sympathetic the portrayal, something major is always wrong or off. However, that is the nature of representation in general, isn't it? The very act of taking real life events and turning them into a narrative means that some things are going to be prioritized and some are going to be neglected (and I think this has been discussed on the list at length). Perhaps even members of a large and complex group cannot "get it right" for all members of that group. Therefore, when you are a member of a group that is trying to gain political power, you might with validity become very sensitive about who represents you and in what way.

Thank you Myrna Marler for your clarifying remarks. It seems to me the political context creates the sensitivity we feel on this issue of artists representing a culture to which they do not belong. Philip Lee of Lee and Low Books, Multicultural Literature for Young Readers, has said that in choosing authors and illustrators to publish, he looks for authenticity, not a particular group membership. Lee and Low's books are read by members of the culture portrayed to make sure questions of authenticity are addressed. As Myrna (and Philip) both note, members of the same cultural group may disagree on what accurately represents them, so this is a complex endeavor. It also seems true that if more cultures were represented in publishing (which is still a largely "white" domain) and contributing varying experiences to the decision-making process, some of these issues would be more effectively addressed.

Although women and minority writers have much more opportunity and access to publishing nowadays than they used to, this continues to be an ideological issue. Some interesting points have been raised in this discussion, but I firmly agree with the majority that writing is perhaps the preeminent realm in which we can transcend our "identity." This was addressed beautifully in a recent _New Yorker_ article (Nov. 18) in which the author points out that "their identity was what Dorothy and Babar were both, in their different ways, out to lose" and that "escapism is the sincerest tribute we can pay to reality. Oz is the best critique of Kansas going." Anyway, there are a lot of different types of and reasons for writing literature, and a lot of different types of writers. The actual thing I wanted to register at this point, as the discussion seems to being petering out, is this: Some authors have been greatly vilified for the seemingly terrible crime of having written about black characters while being white. My three favorite examples of this are: Mark Twain and Jim; Helen Bannerman and Little Black Sambo; and William Styron and Nat Turner. There was an interesting discussion (I believe on this list) a while back about the book _Jake and Honeybunch Go to Heaven_, too, alleging some terrible harassment of the author based on her politically incorrect skin color.

Wait a minute--white people can only write about African-Americans if the characters are Not passive, but ever-resourceful and unwilling to forgive outrages against them? I don't buy this. It seems to me that we're back to where we were in this discussion 10(?) years ago when Alice Walker came out with The Color Purple and people got outraged that she dared to mention incest and abuse among Blacks. Some people fight; others are passive. Some people are ever-resourceful; some are mediocre; some are nasty. Writers need to be able to write about the whole of reality, not just the nice parts.

The actual thing I wanted to register at this point, as the discussion seems to being petering out, is this: Some authors have been greatly vilified for the seemingly terrible crime of having written about black characters while being white. My three favorite examples of this are: Mark Twain and Jim; Helen Bannerman and Little Black Sambo; and William Styron and Nat Turner. There was an interesting discussion (I believe on this list) a while back about the book _Jake and Honeybunch Go to Heaven_, too, alleging some terrible harassment of the author based on her politically incorrect skin color.

And don't forget Theodore Taylor whose depiction of Timothy in The Cay was attacked, and who was asked to give back the Jane Addams Medal as a result. And Florence Crannell Means, who was a pioneer in writing books for young people about many minorities -- the thought of her writing The Moved-Outers, a sympathetic portrayal of the Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned during World War II, in the midst of that war, at the height of that war and anti-Japanese sentiment -- is mind-boggling. Yet, in the 1960s and 1970s, her depictions of minorities were attacked as not showing her characters as angry enough or radical enough, although for the times in which she wrote, her portrayals were radical and ground-breaking.

The comments by Carol Reid and Linnea are starting to help me understand, a bit, the immediate response I had to the question of whether people have tended to "protest too much" when this issue comes up periodically on the list. Seems to me that those of us who respond aren't just responding to the questions as they are posed here in cyber space on this list, but to the way this issue has played out in our lives in recent years. I found the quote about lions and hunters to be a rather good example of how polemical this discussion becomes, with how little room for thoughtful exploration of the complexities--which of us who has dared to write from the perspective of another culture could not feel shamed and put down by such a quote? And in the university-at-large, i daresay (I know it's true at this university) it's become the accepted, majority (if you will) stance that it's unacceptable to write "outside one's culture."

As I've said on this list before, there's much that's published about Africa that sends shivers of irritation or offendedness up and down my spine--but that includes things written or drawn by African Americans. I just can't think the answer is as blanket and pat as it often sounds, say, at our annual writers' conference. That, I think, is why people jump in with a fair amount of emotion when this issue comes around.

On 18 Jan, Myrna Marler wrote: "... This is in response to Wally Hastings posting. I, too, feel tolerance and respect for the storytellers whose imagined worlds enrich us all. However, I think we all need to realize that imagined worlds are not necessarily real worlds, and any representation of a group by an outsider is inherently flawed. I happen to belong to a group that is frequently represented in best-selling novels and no matter how sympathetic the portrayal, something major is always wrong or off. However, that is the nature of representation in general, isn't it? The very act of taking real life events and turning them into a narrative means that some things are going to be prioritized and some are going to be neglected (and I think this has been discussed on the list at length)."

Admittedly, I've been skimming recent postings due to lack of time, and may therefore have missed the 'lengthy discussion' re the fact that narrative usually structures the various components a story in such a way that larger (socio-cultural?) conflicts are glossed over and superficially resolved by means of an aesthetic closure. Could someone please refer me to any material I may have overlooked?

I was born and raised in the Rhodesian bush where my peers during the most formative years of my life were the children of the black families who worked with my father, then in charge of a high security communications site during WWWII. I believe I was able to make myself understood in Ndebele before I spoke English. Having spent most of my life in Africa, I have witnessed at first hand the experiences of black Africans under white colonisation. Should I write about about my perceptions of their experience? Yes, I should. Can I convey those experiences in narrative style? No, I cannot and I don't think anyone yet has succeeding in so doing.

What means of representation do we have, then, to bear witness to the unspeakable? An attempt was made to answer this question after that war, and I'd like to quote from a article I wrote some 12 years ago which included a quick glance at the development of creative fantasy through the theoretical eye of J.R.R. Tolkien:

This genre is a relatively new development arising after 1945 like a phoenix from the ashes of western civilisation. It offered a way of presenting moral and spiritual values that eluded realistic fiction, providing a trenchant critique of contemporary society as well as the means for transcending our self-imposed limitations on fresh perspectives and new insights. But I doubt that fantasy writers such as John Tolkien and C.S. Lewis could have been published at a point in history when consumers had been publically declared more important than citizens, were fantasy not already deeply embedded in western English literary tradition. In a real sense the work of the Oxford Inklings and later, younger fantasy writers like Ursula Le Guin, is merely a return to a way of writing that has been around for centuries but fell from grace under the dual impact of realism and the displacement of epic by the novel.

Although perhaps not the best of fantasy writers, Tolkien's work has been instrumental in shaping the development of the creative fantasy novel. A philologist and Anglo Saxon scholar, he was named a professor at Oxford in 1925 where he completed, over a long life, his best known works of fantasy and scholarship including the Andrew Lang lecture _On Fairy Stories._ This concerns the nature, origins and purpose of fairy stories but the term is misleading because these stories rarely have much to do with fairies. "Most good 'fairy stories' are about the _aventures_ of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. The nature of fairy story thus depends upon the nature of faerie: the Perilous Realm itself ... and this contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky: and the earth and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted."

... [Thus] creative fantasy is the fruit of the imagination's dealings in faerie. Clearly, though, fantasy cannot simply borrow those elements, or motifs or structures that are the essence of epic or folklore as earlier writers did. Then the metaphysical was an acknowledged part of the universe, together a single unified whole. This view was shattered by modern secular rationalism so that now no story teller can take for granted that any belief, custom or ritual is common to all his readers. Instead, he must establish independently the truth of his own premises within the context of his work; he has to be rational about his alternative possibilities by observing realistic conventions. The modern mind cannot accept on its own terms anything we cannot see, hear, taste, touch or smell; an object or event must conform to the estalished rules of everyday existence or risk rejection.

Tolkien confronted this radical scepticism by creating, or as he would have it, subcreating a secondary world which our minds can enter and believe in. The moment we experience disbelief the spell is broken and we turn aside. This secondary realm exists as an independent sphere of the imagination governed by its own laws and significances, yet cleaving strictly to reason, logic and order. In effect, the substance of creative fantasy is put into a fictional framework where it is treated as empirical fact. The subcreator applies logic to it but not for purposes of analysis or quantification. His intention is to give it a new gloss, offering his secondary world as a metaphor for our own and awakening within us a fresh vision of ordinary reality. Creative fantasy invents an alternate world parallel to our 'real' or primary one. And the muse of fantasy wears Lloyd Alexander's good, sensible shoes to fulfill the secular expectation that everything, from psychology to theology, be proven 'real.' Thus the subcreator gives his secondary realm the watertight consistency that induces a secondary belief in the committed reader analogous to the primary belief we accord our own palpable world.

Fantasy, then, "certainly does not destroy or even insult reason, and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and clearer the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (fact or evidence), then fantasy would languish until they were cured if they ever got into that state (it would not seem at all impossible.) Fantasy will perish and become morbid delusion." Fantasy, Tolkien tells us, includes "both the Subcreative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression." It does not in any way change the nature of our own world ..._

And herein lies the crunch. Creative fantasy creates another world in which we could live, and it does so by freeing us from the domination of observed 'fact.' Deconstruction does not let us off so lightly and it is no accident that this movement was spawned by the country that gave us Fraternity, Liberty, Equality. More importantly, it has forced us to find ways to represent 'those major things' which elude narrative structure, or are forced into it and always turn out 'somehow wrong.'

In response to Wally's friend of friend ghost attack, I can offer personal experience of the contiptions caused by the problem of who should tell what stories.

I am on the borad of a tiny nonprofit press here in Durham. Except for a part-time office manager, all staff members and board members are volunteers. We all have families and day jobs. The mission of the press is to publish books by women and minorities. The children's imprint was founded in the 70s as a feminist collective.

This fall, we published a book of poetry by an African-American women, reissued her first book of poems with a new cover, reprinted a collection of short stories by an Africian-American man, and our first ever full-color picture book, written by a white woman, illustrated by an Africian-American man and his Asian wife. All of these books were selected for publication with input of minority writers. We did not publish anything at all last year, and only one title the year before, so this is an incredible output for the press.

Still, one of our granting agencies has called us on the carpet, because we do not have enough minority members on the board. ( We did have several in the past, but they did not come to meetings and were eased off the board. We have also asked several people of color who have been unable to serve.) The frustrating thing is the implication that we are the wrong color to be even PUBLISHING such books. It feels like a case of no good deed goes unpunished.

Let's not forget that Dorothy was forcibly taken away from Kansas and was mighty happy to get BACK. "There's no place like home." She spent the whole time trying to get there. So, I'm not so sure I agree that Oz is a criticism of Kansas, from that standpoint . . . and being here IN Kansas (and having myself returned after living in various parts of the USA and several foreign countries), I find that the Oz story haunts us as the ONE impression people have of this state, i.e., colorless, flat, full of tornadoes, and a place to escape. That's OK . . . the misimpression keeps it nicely underpopulated for those of us who appreciate it.

The Oz story is much more than a criticism of Kansas or the wish to escape one's identity . . . seems to me it is more important as an allegory about what is truly important in life (a heart, courage, a mind . . . )

I enter this discusion late, having been away from my e-mail for several days. Perhaps we could get farther than the pious generalizations by talking about specific examples.

I have learned a lot from Rudine Sims and the Readings in Racism anthology mentioned, and I too am bothered by a knee-jerk limiting reaction to writing about other cultures. The fact remains, however, that there are definite risks an author makes in taking the opportunity.

I've had the opportunity to teach books such as Virginia Hamilton's _Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush_ and Bruce Brooks' _The Moves Make the Man_ in my adolescent literature classes, and I'm very interested in the problem of voice and consistency. I like Hamilton's work a lot because it's always stretching my expectations of what's "allowed"--in _Sweet Whispers_ she depicts, uncompromisingly, a mother who is both good and bad to her children, and might, if written by a white person, be accused of being racist. However, Hamilton can do it.

Brooks' novel, on the other hand, creates a smart, self-confident, sassy black narrator who is just a little too good to be true, as far as I'm concerned. He's got a great home, wonderful mother, exaggeratedly intelligent siblings, etc., etc., and some of it just doesn't ring true. In particular, there's a couple of places where the character's treated very badly by racist types of one kind and another, and Jayfox, the character, simply shrugs it off--he's incredibly self-confident for a thirteen-year-old, and it doesn't ring true to me. The book is well written and complex--I love the issues it raises about truth. Ironically, one of the operating metaphors in the book is a mock-apple pie, made of ritz crackers to fool the unwary. But part of me feels that his protagonist is rather like mock-apple pie. He's TOO together, TOO smart, TOO objective and PC.

Have others read the book and responded differently?

Though there seems to be some general agreement and reasonable framework among those who have expressed themselves on this list concerning who can write about what and for whom (many thanks, Jane, for your comments from your article; when and where can we see the whole article?), in other places there is rabid disagreement. I have seen heated arguments. I have witnessed at least two different editors for major publishing houses tell two different writers at writers conferences that they should not pursue the ms. they had brought for critique (this was in a group read-aloud critique session) BECAUSE they were not from the ethnic group they were writing about OR because they didn't live on the continent in which the story took place . . . even when the story was an original animal fable. They did NOT cite problems with the stories themselves, the content, characterizations, etc. What they said was that their publishing house, and others, would not touch them because the writers weren't from the same ethnic background! In the case of one of these particular manuscripts, the author had asked for critical assistance from the group written about in developing the ms. In the case of the original animal fable, which was excellent, there was no one to consult.

These were not isolated incidents. This is a real concern; it is a gray censorship issue, where good writers are not "allowed" to write (or, more accurately, they may WRITE but not be considered for publication) about anyone unlike themselves. Our literature will be poorer for this.

However, I do have real concerns about those who write about other cultures or characters from other ethnic groups WITHOUT any real knowledge, understanding or appreciation. I've seen plenty of that, too.

Ok, now let me see if I have this straight. I've been bemoaning the fact that I'm living a life bracketed by debits, credits and ratios whose numerators are even more common than their denominators, cursing myself to sleep every night over the twists and turns in fate's road, those glasses I refused to wear... which is the only explanation I can come up w/ for all the signs I must have run over, how else to explain the fact that my residence is a cottage with mud walls rather than a tapestried room in the Published Author Castle, where I rightfully belong.

Yet now I'm to believe that it was all for the best? That had I somehow managed to wheedle, weasel or whimper my way into the good graces of some fine, upstanding publishing concern, that today I might very well find myself hounded from my home, a pariah because of my refusal to confine myself and my ink to the wells wherein splash only the stories of women whose lives are mirror images of my own? That had I dared people a chapter with a Native American or two, that I would've been forced to keep his and her shirts on at all times, no matter how hot the prairie fire that was threatening them and their buffalo? That any boys in my stories, no matter their age, skin color or religious persuasion, would be forced to avoid all eye contact, esp. glances of any sort, lest visions of piercing, penetrating and eye-batting rush into my reader's minds, thereby taking their minds far afield of my plot?

But wait! Would I be allowed to use _afield_ when I'm not a farmer or a farmer's wife? And must I only speak of plots if I've worked in a cemetery? I used to live next to a cemetery, the one on the corner of Bethel Road and Opossumtown Pike, for those taking notes on my credentials; will that do? And if fields are ok, what about the animals I put in them? Horses, for example: are there Expert Readers out there whose sworn duty it is to disallow all horseback riding by girls? Are bats, cricket or baseball, phallic symbols to be used only at one's peril? What about the winged variety of bat; can they still bite necks and suck blood or must they take a vow of vegetables before their lives can see the light of print? (Has anyone told Mr Stine of these rules?) Should only non-Chinese humans be seated in front of my rice bowls and water chestnuts; must only my Mexicans eat watermelon?

What about muffins? Would that word now automatically disqualify me from a first printing of 100,000, because of its unwillingness to disassociate itself from the word _stud_? If I force all my heroines to eat cake instead, will I be tarred w/ the same brush w/ which Marie Antoniette dabbed rouge on her cheeks? Would the substitution of cake for muffins leave me wide open to those enemies who would convict me of advocating the return of the guillotine as a humane form of capital puishment? What would be the implications for my paperback rights?

I must say, I am grateful for the turn the conversation has taken. Tonite, for the first time in many years, I shall sleep peacefully, secure in the knowledge that the next best career move I could possibly make would be to start studying for my CPA exam. Or maybe a law degree.

Resa:

I laughed aloud at you commentary concerning writers who write about people/things/ideas out of their specific life/environment (even while I knew they were serious). Such a wonderfully clear assessment of the situation. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

I have read "An Empress of Thieves" and like many others have stated find it expresses my thoughts and feelings. My favorite quote: "I have pulled threads from magic tapestries to weave up my own new cloth." An aside: I loved _Merlyn and the Dragons_ , a rich tapestry interweaving the characters of Arthur and Merlin. (I too am in love with the Arthurian legends, particularly Merlyn, for whom I named my balck and tan dachshund after.)

I have a young Pakistani teacher candidate in my introductory theory and practice course here at York University. AS part of an introfduction to young adult novels and the literature circle method I had the students select from eight novels such as THe Giver, THe Devil's Arithmetic, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Most of the students who selected Shabanu were South Asian. I have shared this title with a number of Moslem friends who thought it was a wonderful story, but they were not Pakistanis. The one student in the group from Pakistan was very offended by the book and felt it selected a very exotic aspect and did not portray her culture fairly. She argued it was a subtle example of prevailing anti-moslem feeling in North America

Has anyone had eperiences with this position on this title?

Yes, I have had almost identical responses from students and even more objection to Haveli, the sequel. One of the many questions that arises with these books is whether they perpetuate cultural views that represent a colonial and post-colonial mentality. One is easily and perhaps justly captivated with the character Shabanu and just as easily accepting of cultural mis-representations.

"The one student in the group from Pakistan was very offended by the book and felt it selected a very exotic aspect and did not portray her culture fairly. She argued it was a subtle example of prevailing anti-moslem feeling in North America. Has anyone had eperiences with this position on this title?"

Interesting--I had a foreign student (don't know her country of birth) who was a Muslim in my graduate class when we read _Shabanu_. She said she expected that the book would be anti-Muslim but was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't. She enjoyed the book but also felt it portrayed only one aspect of the culture. (It is set in the past, though, isn't it? I've forgotten which leader it refers to, but thought there was a reference that linked the story to an approximate year--can't find my notes to check, however...)

Kay, I'm trying to get a better handle on this. Are the students saying that that values implicit in Staples's text reflect colonial and post-colonial views, and thus (I'm inferring) present the situations in Shabanu and Haveli in a biased, less positive way, than someone from within that culture would have done?

This is, of course, related to the question of who should be allowed to write about whom, which I don't want to re-open. But, it also relates to a question we've also discussed before on the list, that the writer can't completely escape the perspective of the particular time or place from which he or she comes -- so each generation rewrites history, for example.

I guess part of what I'm wondering is whether the students feel Staples just plain got things wrong, or whether they feel that their interpretation of the events, of the story would be different, or whether they felt this wasn't a story she should have told at all.

To give this additional context, I am also thinking of reactions by the people written about (or who thought they were being written about) to the works of many writers -- John Steinbeck and Cannery Row, for example, or Grace Metalious and Peyton Place, and there must be many other examples (I wonder if anyone has studied the phenomenon of reactions to writers' books from those written about?). I suspect most of us like to be portrayed favorably and react with outrage at interpretations of our culture, city, family, behavior, selves, etc. that do not agree with our views even though they may agree with others'perceptions of us.

The story is contemporary to this century, although I do not recall a specific mention of time. The motorized vehicles are the only clue to time period that I recall.

Apologies -- I've been trying to post two messages for a couple of days now. Hope this does it:

In a message dated 97-02-09 14:27:34 EST, you write: "I have a young Pakistani teacher candidate in my introductory theory and practice course here at York University. AS part of an introfduction to young adult novels and the literature circle method I had the students select from eight novels such as THe Giver, THe Devil's Arithmetic, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Most of the students who selected Shabanu were South Asian. I have shared this title with a number of Moslem friends who thought it was a wonderful story, but they were not Pakistanis.

The one student in the group from Pakistan was very offended by the book and felt it selected a very exotic aspect and did not portray her culture fairly. She argued it was a subtle example of prevailing anti-moslem feeling in North America.

Has anyone had eperiences with this position on this title?"

As the author of Shabanu and Haveli, I'd ike to say a few words about reactions to "Shabanu" and "Haveli that I've heard from Moslems, including the reactions of Pakistani Moslems. I spent three years living in and near the Cholistan Desert on Pakistan's border with India, traveling with desert nomads and doing research for these books. I had more than a dozen Pakistani people who were familiar with the Cholistan Desert read the manuscripts before I submitted them to the publisher. I asked my readers to help me check for accuracy in observing and interpreting details of the way of life of a very specific group of people who live as semi-nomads in Cholistan. The reactions of my readers were very helpful, and they all -- to a person -- remarked that I had captured effectively and accurately what life for the Cholistani nomads is really like.

This is not a novel about Moslems. It is a story about a very specific subtribe who live in a part of the vast Thar Desert that falls within the borders of the Pakistani state of Punjab called Cholistan. It is not meant to be an interpretation of or defense of or explanation of Islam to the rest of the world. That these people are Moslem is a fact about them, but it is no more central to the stories in these two books than the fact that Buck and Tunes are Christian in "Dangerous Skies," my most recent book. All three books are stories in all the particularity of detail about the lives of individual families that a story must be.

I know of several efforts on the part of Moslems (many of whom are not Pakistani) to have Shabanu banned because they feel it is offensive to Moslems. When I have asked for more precise information on what it is that offends, those who have complained were unable to explain in any detail what they found untrue or offensive.

The principal of the Islamic Academy in Orlando, Florida, where I spoke to students last year said "It is not the story, per se, that offends. What is so hard to swallow is that the rest of the world, if they read such things, will think that all Moslems are backward camel herders."

What this pincipal said began to ring a familiar chord. Most of the negative comments I have heard both by Pakistanis (like the one in Jerry's course) and Moslems who were otherwise unfamiliar with the Cholistan Desert stem from the feeling that somehow the story of Shabanu is meant to represent all Muslims all over the world.

This is a very complex issue. I think the question of authenticity often arises when a group of people feels that someone who has no right to do so "speaks" for them. Representation is not what story is all about. Story is particular. It speaks only for the author and the characters he or she creates. It is meant to touch the heart, to establish a connection. Story is not intended to be, nor should it be taken as instructive about or representative of an entire group of people, whoever they may be.

I hope this sheds some light on a very emotionally charged issue that I really believe reflects a mistaken notion of what a story should be.

Sincerely,

Suzanne Fisher Staples

I read & loved both *Shabanu, & Haveli*, & I failed to see that this very warm & loving family were backward in any way. What I thought was quite wonderful was the very similar relationship Shabanu had to her camels that one sees with girls & horses in Western European cultures. I recognized it immediately as the same very tight bond. So I'm afraid what I took away from these books was a universality of experience, both in bonds between humans and animals, & cultural conflict between parents & young people.

I think it was quite clear that this was a particular & very wonderful family in a particular & very interesting culture. I thought what these two titles represented was the best of the old adage about visiting the world from one's armchair through the windows books provide (paraphrased!)

I am desperately hoping that there will be a third volume & that it will be a trilogy. *Haveli* cries for vol. 3, & I've been wanting to tell you so since I finished it.

Thanks Suzanne for an outstanding contribution to the world of literature.